I have a new Digitrax Zephyr, and I have been trying it out for programming and running and everything seems peachy. I was planning on hooking the programming leads up to one of the tracks coming off my turntable at the roundhouse - possibly the track leading to some aspect of loco maintenance. I understand that the programming leads need to stay separate from the Rail A/Rail B leads, lest I re-program everything on the layout, but I was wondering... Couldn't one employ a DPDT switch for that ONE piece of track to toggle between running off the Rail A/Rail B outputs and programming using the programming outputs? It just seems like this shouldn't be a problem, but since I don't want the magic smoke to come out of my new Zephyr I thought I would run it by here, first.
I use a DPDT switch on my layout for the programming track and it works fine. Its on a passing siding and I just double gapped both ends. The switch also has a Center Off position so I can place locos on the track without having to turn power off to the the rest of the layout and to be sure there is a good break between the track power and programming power.
Stan, That's kind of what I was thinking. There will be a natural power-break between this section of track and the rest of the layout simply because it is a spur off the turntable. I will make sure it is wired correctly, too. When I read in the manual that you are supposed to place locos on the programming track but not run them onto it, I thought there had to be some way. Diesels are one thing, but once you get the Kato GS4 on track you kind of don't want to have to take it back off since it takes a while to position it correctly. Adam
This works fine as long as you don't mistakenly leave the program track selected and try to run a loco up onto the program track section. This typically has the nasty side effect of blowing the program track output so be very careful. There are ways to minimize this effect and the Digitrax Yahoo group has wiring diagram of how to accomplish this. http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/UKGXSZIssiaf1iOoD-7wFmUu1FM2dsPDEcGTtk8gKRJYoaWbp0vvP6OKbDCPQnJJLlbbligCQVONSzLz_BZvpjA/4PDT.pdf If the link doesn't work go to the files section of the Digitrax group and look for the file 4PDT.pdf. PeteC
